Rev Steve Chalke has reclaimed the world record for the most money raised by running in a marathon, nearly £2 million (or US $4 million)...
Yes, this is the same Steve Chalke who is still being vilified by many Christians for calling a distorted view of the atonement “cosmic child abuse”. The money he raised shows how many people still support him and his ministries. Chalke completed the London marathon in less than four hours, but his atonement marathon has been running for nearly four years, and still looks set to run and run.
Those who love our Lord Jesus Christ and love the bible's message about him dying in our place are understandable upset when this teaching is misrepresented and even ridiculed. Sometimes our own efforts to articulate this teaching have been the cause of its being maligned, because at times evangelicals have used silly illustrations in support of it (as the authors of Pierced for our Transgressions have pointed out at the conclusion of their book).
It is terrific to see Mr Chalke's enthusiasm and success in raising money for his work with the poor and disadvantaged. He is not being called to account for this.
But from what Steve himself has said, he is not arguing against a caricature of the atonement, but against penal substitutionary atonement itself. It seems to me that the bible has more than one image of the atonement, but that the model of Christ dying and taking the punishment for our sins is definitely a key one.
Talk of God as a divine psychopath (Jeffrey John) or a cosmic child-abuser (Steve Chalke) reveals uneasiness over the bible's teaching about the holiness and wrath of God, and a misunderstanding of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perfect harmony and agreement (which later theologians felt constrained to develop into the doctrine of the trinity). I also think that many problems people have with biblical teachings (which penal substitutionary atonement clearly is) can be traced to an unwillingness to accept God's right to be God and to order things in the ways he sees fit.
1 comment:
Just to clarify, Jeffrey John has not called God a psychopath, and Steve Chalke has not called God a child-abuser. You may find this kind of language in books by atheists like Richard Dawkins - although even he doesn't actually believe that there is a God who is like this.
What John and Chalke are saying is that some distorted versions of the doctrine of the atonement, versions which do actually exist although they are disowned by everyone I have seen commenting about this issue on the blogosphere, present God as if he were a psychopath or a child-abuser. There is a very real distinction here. The God in whom John believes and the one in whom Chalke believes are not at all like this, in fact if anything they can be criticised for being the opposite, loving in a soft and sentimental way without justice.
I say this not to defend anyone's views, just to put the record straight.
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